The new rockband.com launches! (Or, pulling my head out of the sand)

[allizon]

I know I've been pretty quiet around here lately, and I've been mostly absent from social activities for which I'd have loved to have been not-absent. But I've had my head buried in work, and after four months of sometimes strenuous development, I'm proud to officially show off that thing which has sucked up most of my brainpower and sociability for so long: the brand new version of the official Rock Band website.

Overall, I've gotta say that I'm pretty proud of the site. I didn't do the visual design, so I can't take either credit or blame there (though I'll say that I like the overall look our designer came up with). What I did was — well, for lack of a better word, I'm the glue. One of our other developers built out the database components and the other did some of the back-end architecture-y stuff for some of the features which will get the most attention, but I'm the one who took everything, slammed it all together and built out all of the stuff needed to make all of these pieces talk to each other. And I'm the one who integrated all of that into the visual design and built all the stuff to let users actually do stuff on the site. My fingerprints are all over this thing.

Now that this thing's done, I've still got a whole lot of work ahead of me — plans to add way-cool new features to the site, plus some other top-secret stuff I can't even slyly hint at. But I'm hoping that now that the site launch is behind me, I can start thinking about having a social life again and having time to get back to doing some personal projects. Oh, and actually, y'know, spending more time with my family, who've had to put up with way, way too much of my absence over the last six weeks or so. rintrahroars has been an absolute saint about all the overtime I've had to put in, and I've tried to let her go out to social shindigs in my place when possible so's she could get some kid-free time. Soon, baby, we'll have some time together away from the kids, which will be simply fantastic!

Anyway, I hope to be able soon to get my head back out into the world instead of stuck inside this website-full-of-rock. It's going to take some readjustments on my part, I'm sure — always does when I've had an extended introverted period — so I hope all of my wonderful friends can help pull me out of it!

(Also, Terry and I (and, far too briefly, fraterrisus) got to attend the Offical Rock Band 2 Release Party at the Hard Rock Café in downtown Boston on Friday night. Easily the coolest corporate party I've ever been to — the Hard Rock was rented out to us exclusively that night, and the free drinks and food just kept on coming. Live-band karaoke, two Rock Band 2 setups on huge flat-screen TVs and 300 or so Harmonix and MTV employees and guests. Thanks ever so much to wiley_b and mittere for watching our li'l rockers so we could go!) 

Comments

[points.livejournal.com]

Woo! Congrats! :) Now take some deep breaths... ;)

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Fabulous! That's GOTTA feel good. Glad you posted; I'd been wondering how you were doing...

[penk.livejournal.com]

Yay! Welcome back!

I'm fiddling with the site, just created a username for myself (eidolon, duh) - just cuz I like nabbing usernames before someone else does *nod* :)

YAY!

[badlittlemonkey.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And good idea... I've been going all-out on this thing for awhile. Time to take a little down time at work and prep for the Next Big Thing, coming far too soon. :)

[badlittlemonkey.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does -- the fans so far mostly seem to like it, and I know I'm feeling pretty proud of how it's turned out. :)

I'm hoping to be "around" a little more now -- I've missed talking to you, even if it's just via LJ comments! *hugs*

[badlittlemonkey.livejournal.com]

I've now sent you a friend request on the site -- kind of cool, using functionality I built into the site myself to do it. :)

Hope you dig the site so far! Once you get your Xbox 360, you can link up your account and play with all of the *really* fun stuff. ;)

[catya.livejournal.com]

Hurray! Nice site, and i'm psyched to be able to see you more! :) :)

[badlittlemonkey.livejournal.com]

Thanks, you! I'm psyched for you to able to see me more, too. ;)